


a little (a lot) blindly

by glowgal



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26256793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowgal/pseuds/glowgal
Summary: Katara is a med student who needs silence like she needs to breathe. Zuko is a classical pianist determined to succeed. Separated only by a wall, things get interesting.Loosely based on the French film "Blind Date" ("Un peu, beaucoup, aveuglément").
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 113





	1. la loi de murphy

**Author's Note:**

> hi everyone :) this is my first ever fanfiction (on ao3 anyway, i wrote some awful percy jackson fics when i was 14 on ffnet) and i'm really nervous to post it, but i had this idea and i couldn't not write it. blind date is one of my very favorite romantic comedies and the story fits these two dorks so perfectly, but i took a lot of creative liberties and have added a lot more backstory so as to build the world of these two a bit more. i hope you enjoy and that you can sort of tell where the story's headed. anyway. here ya go.

Katara thrived in silence.

Growing up in the South Pole, silence was one thing that wasn’t hard to come by. Katara’s mother had always been full of life and laughter, and after her death, the silence in their home on the reservation was almost deafening. Sure, her older brother supplied an almost constant stream of chatter from the second he woke up to the moment he went to bed, but Sokka was almost always out helping his father manage the countless duties expected of him as the Tribe’s chief. Katara often found herself studying in the house with only her Gran-Gran for company, the noise in her head her only source of distraction.

The quiet crushed Katara at first, when her mother’s passing was fresh and the grief was lodged in her chest like an icepick, and she’d desperately tried to fill the void of her mother’s absence with mindless chatter, with song, with slammed doors and shouts and sobs. But over time, Katara grew to live with the silence. There was something strangely cathartic about being forced to listen to the thoughts in her head, and as she began to cope with the loss of her mother, she also learned that her very best studying was done in perfect silence. Her rise to the top of her class was furthered by Sokka’s departure from the reservation – after he left to pursue Mechanical Engineering at the The University of Ba Sing Se ( _My Sokka is the very first in our tribe to go to university,_ Gran-Gran would tell everyone with unabashed pride), their house fell even quieter, and Katara dove deeper into her studies. She graduated with a perfect GPA and a full ride to The University of Ba Sing Se, following in the footsteps of her big brother.

Now, as a pre-med student, Katara needed silence like she needed to breathe.

Not that her neighbors cared.

Katara knew she was lucky to live where she did. All University students were allowed only two years of on-campus housing, due to the limited space for dorm buildings in the city and the sheer number of students in need of housing. Katara could barely afford any food that wasn’t on her meal plan, let alone pay rent for an apartment in the biggest city in the world. However, her former roommate, a fiercely loyal blind girl named Toph, offered Katara the best possible living situation for her junior year – her very own apartment in one of the posh buildings Toph’s family owned.

“You and I both know you need privacy for your sad life of eternal studying, Sugar Queen, and it’s not like my family is hard pressed for cash,” – a massive understatement, the Beifongs were the wealthiest people in Ba Sing Se – “Besides, my parents are desperately trying to get me involved in the family business somehow. I’ve agreed to manage the building as the landlord in exchange for them getting off my fucking back. So I’ll give you the place for free, as long as you promise me you’ll quit studying once in a while and come fuck shit up with me.

Katara gratefully agreed to fuck shit up (usually in the form of getting absolutely obliterated at her favorite bar and cheering on Toph as she swindled every man who dared to underestimate her out of his cash), and in exchange, lived in the apartment of her absolute dreams – spacious, filled with natural light, and of course, peacefully silent at all times.

Her bliss lasted about a month. Katara lived and studied in her quiet bubble, flying through her Organic Chemistry problem sets with an ease that was uncharacteristic even for her. She broke the silence once a week, inviting Sokka and Toph and her best friend Aang over for dinner every Saturday, and they would all remark on how perfect everything had turned out. How ideal her situation was.

Then her neighbors moved in.

Upon first meeting, Chong and Lily seemed like a perfectly normal, nice couple. Lily was pregnant, and Katara thought with relief that that meant they’d be fairly laid back – they wouldn’t be throwing any ragers, certainly, and hopefully Lily’s enormous baby bump would prevent them from having crazy loud sex. Chong seemed zen almost to a fault, and Katara suspected marijuana had something to do with it – but that was just fine. Katara didn’t mind the scent of weed at all, and maybe they even could point her in the direction of a good dealer once her finals were over. It seemed like an ideal situation. She welcomed the couple to the building with a batch of fresh-baked cookies and a dazzling smile.

Naturally, their band came as a bit of a shock.

“Band” was a generous term. Chong and Lily had a group of friends who would come over every Tuesday evening, bringing dramyins and horns and a fucking _gong_ , and they would play the loudest, most horrible music Katara had ever heard in her life. They called themselves the Nomads, and they knew a total of about three songs. That didn’t stop them from improvising, however – Katara actually wasn’t sure whether she preferred the repetition of the same three songs or the wild and off-key musical riffs they would go on for hours. The first night the Nomads played together in their new apartment, Katara was studying for an Orgo exam, and the music shattered her concentration so horribly that she got a _92_ on the exam. She was inconsolable.

“Katara, I thought somebody had died!” Aang said when he arrived at her apartment after she’d called him, crying and incoherent. He was winded, and Katara realized he must have sprinted there. “You got a 92? Isn’t that good?”

Katara wailed.

The second time the Nomads came to visit, Katara gripped her pencil so tightly it splintered, and she spent the rest of the night picking fragments of wood out of her skin with tweezers. Luckily she’d already completed her Bio lab, but she could hardly focus on proofreading her work while dealing with the splinters in her fingers. She called Sokka, who was living in his own apartment, paid for himself thanks to his new job as a contracting engineer for the city. Within the hour, he’d stopped by with Aang to look over the lab and calm Katara down

Sokka froze as soon as he walked in the door and the ear-splitting sounds of the Nomads crashed over him. “Spirits, Katara, I thought you were exaggerating when you said it was the worst music you’d ever heard,” he said, his face screwing up like he’d just tasted a rotten sea prune. “What the hell are they singing about a secret tunnel for?”

Aang took a seat on the floor next to Katara, gently taking the tweezers out of her hand. “Here, let me.”

After helping Katara remove her splinters and drying her tears, Aang, ever the peacemaker, volunteered to go with her to talk to her new neighbors that weekend.

“You’ve got a perfectly valid excuse, Katara,” Aang said, his sunny smile wavering slightly as a loud gong crash sounded from next door. “You’re a busy student. They have to understand that you need your peace and quiet!”

Aang’s unwavering faith in others rang true, for once. “Of course we’ll stop playing on the weeknights,” Lily said when Aang and Katara showed up at their door the next day. “How could we have been so thoughtless? We’re so sorry for disturbing your studies, Katara.”

Victory was sweet that Friday evening. Toph declared it to be a “Fuck-Shit-Up Night,” and Katara, Aang and Sokka followed her from bar to bar, laughing at the expressions of the poor suckers the blind girl arm-wrestled out of their money. “I’m so thankful for you guys,” Katara slurred on the subway home. “Thanks for helping me defeat that band. And for getting me drunk.”

Aang laughed. “What is this, Scott Pilgrim? We just asked them to be quiet, silly.”

Katara shook her head. “No. It was a victory. We defeated them.”

Toph leaned her head on Katara’s shoulder, closing her eyes. “Hooray. Now shut up, my head hurts.”

But their victory was short-lived. That Saturday afternoon, a very hungover Katara was startled out of her nap by the sound of a loud gong crash from next door. Chong’s voice rang out, clear as day through the wall – “A five, a six, a five-six-seven-eight!” 

As the cacophony began, Katara found she was completely at a loss. She’d asked her neighbors to stop playing on weeknights, and they had. She’d failed to specify that it was their music that was driving a stake through her skull, not just the timing of their practice. Could she really go over there and tell them to stop playing altogether?

Sokka said she could. “They’re being assholes, Katara! You might not be studying on Saturdays, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve some quiet. Want me to go over there and boomerang them for you?”

Aang thought the situation was resolved. “They agreed to our request, Katara. I would feel pretty terrible having to go over there and tell them that our compromise wasn’t enough, you know? At least they’re not affecting your studying!”

Toph was, surprisingly, torn. “I don’t know, Sugar Queen. No one else in the building has complained about the noise – not that that doesn’t mean it’s not annoying!” She interjected quickly at Katara’s indignant squawk. “If you wanna go kick their asses, you know I support. But my parents are already kind of angry I gave away an apartment for free, so, you know. Just don’t make Chong and Lily mad enough to cancel their lease.”

That decided it. She owed Toph big time for literally gifting her an apartment, and she wasn’t about to endanger her friend’s freedom by giving her parents another reason to be overbearing. She invested in noise-canceling headphones that didn’t manage to quite drown out the noise or the vibration in the floor when they rang that infernal gong, but they at least stopped her from subconsciously singing along to “Secret Tunnel.”

It went on like this for months. Katara learned to cram all her weekend studying on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, which meant no Friday nights out – not that Katara minded all that much. However, Toph considered Friday evenings to be “prime fuck-shit-up time,” and the blind girl usually wasted about an hour of Katara’s studying time every Friday night pestering her to go out.

Aang was also disappointed by this change in Katara’s schedule – he and Katara had loved to do Saturday morning yoga classes together, and Sokka refused to go in Katara’s place, citing his “manliness” as his excuse. Even the subsequent lecture Aang and Katara gave Sokka on gender roles wouldn’t sway him to attend. Toph was a no-go as well, simply because she was always far too hungover. Aang was forced to attend yoga alone.

 _It’s fitting that the band is called the Nomads,_ Katara thought darkly one Friday evening. Toph had just left after pestering her to come smoke with her and Aang, and had taken this night’s inevitable rejection just as poorly as she took it every week. _They’re forcing me away from all of my friends._

Katara was called back to the loneliness of high school, the feeling that she and Sokka were the only people in her entire tribe who wanted more than just to stay in one place forever. The constant studying wasn’t just a way to deal with the silence – it was a way to get out. To help people. Was Katara following that dream? Or was she just the same girl she was in high school, studying her life away?

Katara didn’t have the answer, and before she knew it, semester finals were fast approaching. With her noise-canceling headphones secured over her ears, she fell into a vigilant schedule of non-stop studying. When she emerged from her frenzy with 6 finals completed and an almost perfect semester GPA ( _curse that 92_ ), Katara hadn’t seen her friends or her brother in over 2 weeks. _I’m studying to help people,_ she reminded herself to assuage the guilt that was clawing at her chest.

The Friday after her last final, Toph and Aang arrived at her apartment, presenting a cake that said “Congrats, You Survived Finals and Also the Nomads” in crammed, yet legible icing script. Katara engulfed them both in enormous hugs, then froze. “Wait. What do you mean? I survived the Nomads?”

Toph and Aang shared a look. “You didn’t know?” Aang asked, beaming. “Lily had her baby, except guess what – it was surprise twins! And they didn’t have enough space in the apartment for two babies, so they moved out! I can’t believe you didn’t even notice the music had stopped!”

Toph cackled. “Guess who’s going out tonight?”

Katara burst into tears of joy.

To celebrate the end of finals and her neighbors’ blessed departure, Sokka took her out to dinner in the Upper Ring that weekend, and Katara announced decisively over a very expensive bowl of Chashu ramen that she would never have noisy neighbors again. Even if it killed her.

“You’re the most dramatic person I’ve ever met, Katara,” Sokka sighed, but there was a laugh in his voice. “And how do you plan on making that happen, huh?”

Katara contemplated, taking a slurp of the last remaining bit of broth in her bowl. “What makes people move?”

Sokka looked confused. “I don’t know, their brains? The nervous system? You’re the pre-med student, not me.”

“No, dummy,” Katara snickered. “I mean, what makes people leave their apartments before their lease is up?”

Now it was Sokka’s turn to contemplate, adopting the expression Aang had once dubbed “Sokka’s Scheme Face.” “Oh ho ho, I see what you’re getting at. Very interesting…”

The waiter showed up to deliver the check, and seeing as Sokka was lost in what could only be a very intense brainstorming session, Katara took the proffered bill. She opened it and choked. “Sokka,” she hissed, once the waiter was gone, “Can we afford this?”

Sokka snapped to attention. “Huh? Oh, yeah. Fancy new job, remember?” he said proudly, leaning over to take the check. “My treat, baby sis.”

Katara heart panged with a feeling she couldn’t quite name. She remembered the winter after her mother died, when her father expected her to cook the scarce amount of game he would bring back from his hunts with Sokka. She remembers her calls with Sokka after he arrived at university, his weary yet cheerful voice informing her that the only food he’d been able to afford for the week was a pallet of packaged ramen. That had only been a few years ago, and look at Sokka now. Look at Katara. _We’re helping people,_ she thought. _Starting with ourselves._

“Are you even listening to me?”

Sokka had been speaking, and Katara looked up from where she had been twisting her cloth napkin vigorously in her lap, tears pinpricking her eyes.

“Katara, are you crying? If you want to pay for dinner that badly, I guess it’s fine, but you have to at least let me split the check with you—"

Katara shook her head, giving her big brother a watery smile. “No, no. I’m just proud of you, is all.”

Sokka beamed. “Hey, thanks. But you’re about to be even more proud of me.”

Katara tilted her head in silent question. Sokka’s grin turned wolfish.

“We’re going to haunt your new neighbor.”

_

Shockingly, Sokka’s plan ended up being fairly simple. Well, not simple, exactly. But it wasn’t exactly the “paid-actors-and-special-effects-makeup” vision that had popped into Katara’s head upon first hearing his suggestion.

“We’ll drill a hole through the shared wall, see, and insert a metal rod with a handle on your side of the wall.” They were walking to the subway, Sokka gesticulating wildly to illustrate the plan that was forming in his annoyingly genius brain. “And the rod will be attached to something hanging on your neighbor’s wall. Something in the apartment that’s there when they move in. I don’t know, maybe a clock? Or… oh! A painting!”

Katara hummed. “Okay, so I have a metal rod attached to a painting. Great. How is that haunting, exactly?"

Sokka gave her a look. “Let me finish. We’ll install some kind of speaker system on your side of the wall – the walls are clearly paper thin, so we don’t even need to do anything sound-wise on their side. The night after they move in, you’ll play a recording of something scaryish, like… a woman screaming or a guy moaning or something. And then you’ll turn the handle back and forth, and the painting will move, and it’ll be just like the painting is haunted!”

“It could work,” Katara admits, ignoring Sokka’s immediate scoff of “ _Could?_ ” “I would feel kind of bad, though, scaring someone like that! How awful would that be, to move into a place and then have to leave immediately because you think you’re living with a ghost?”

Sokka shrugged. “Toph could always warn tenants that there were rumors the apartment was haunted. That way, no one will even buy it! And if someone does, they know what they’re signing up for. You’ll just have the speakers and the painting set up just in case some jerk thinks he can take on a ghost.”

Katara gaped at her brother. “You want _Toph_ in on it?”

Toph, of course, found the whole idea hilarious, and was more than happy to comply with Sokka’s demands when they came to her the next day.

“Anything to get Sugar Queen here to come out with me more. Plus, it gives me the chance to scam rich assholes out of their security deposits,” she cackled.

Katara leveled a stern look at Toph that, of course, went entirely over the blind girl’s head. “Toph, no. You are not going to become a dickhead landlord on my watch. You’re doing this to help me, not to con people out of their money.”

Toph nodded. “You’re right, Sugar Queen,” she acknowledged in a rare show of deference, but her pale eyes still glinted with mischief. Katara sighed and silently resolved to look over Toph’s finances once a month.

When Sokka drilled through the wall to pass the metal rod through to the neighboring apartment, they discovered the reason the Nomad’s music had been so jarring – the wall was almost completely hollow.

“There’s not even any insulation!” Sokka said indignantly. “No wonder the noise level was so bad in here. Toph, tell your parents their building is built like shit!”

Toph snorted. “Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that.”

The task of finding the painting had initially been relegated to Toph, who’d simply stared blankly at Sokka until he realized why that might have been an issue. Katara ended up purchasing a beautiful ocean scene from the thrift market, and she and Sokka both agreed it was nice enough to be displayed in the neighboring apartment without any suspicion from buyers. Sokka attached the painting to the metal rod, and after installing a simple speaker system in Katara’s apartment, his vision was complete.

The day it was completed, they decided to put Sokka’s genius to the test. Sokka and Toph went next door, while Katara stayed put. She could hear her friends talking loudly through the wall – “Wow, I am so glad we rented this new apartment! It looks so great and not at all haunted!”

Katara took a deep breath and pressed play on the track on her phone Sokka had downloaded entitled “Ooky Spooky.” She wasn’t sure exactly what she was expecting, but it wasn’t the horrible moaning and screaming that emanated from the speaker. She shuddered, grabbing the handle of the metal rod and twisting it back and forth so that the painting on the other side of the wall would rotate in time with the eerie groans.

“Uh, Katara, you can stop now!” Sokka hollered through the wall, voice cracking slightly. “It’s definitely scary!

Katara heard Toph snort. “I mean, it _sounds_ fucking crazy. Sokka, where did you get that audio?”

Their voices faded as they left the neighboring apartment. Katara sighed, pressing pause on the track. Their plan would work, but part of her still felt guilty. She was suddenly very glad they’d decided not to let Aang in on their little scheme – he definitely wouldn’t approve.

“What’s wrong, Katara?” Sokka’s voice snapped her out of her reverie as he and Toph reentered her apartment. Katara’s face must have betrayed her worries, she realized. “It works! Aren’t you pumped?

Katara looked at her brother fondly. “Yes, and I’m so thankful for your help. Both of you. But… I don’t know. Isn’t this pretty twisted, what we’re doing?

Toph shrugged. “You gotta do what you gotta do, Sugar Queen.”

Sokka nodded, throwing his arm around Katara. “Toph’s right. You’re going to be the first real doctor from our tribe, Katara. And we’re gonna help you do whatever it takes to make that happen.”

Katara’s eyes welled up with tears. “I love you guys,” she choked out, reaching out and dragging a grumbling Toph into their hug.

She closed her eyes and tried to quell the guilt still churning in her stomach. _I’m not just doing this for me,_ Katara told herself. _I’m doing this to help people_.

She hoped it would be worth it.


	2. un peu trop fou, pour moi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the support on my first chapter!!! get ready for more exposition and ~zuko angst~ but also fun friendship times :)

Zuko was ready to leave.

It wasn’t that he was unhappy with his current living situation, per se. The apartment over his uncle’s tea shop in Ba Sing Se was nice, if a little small. Iroh had turned the space above The Jasmine Dragon into a cozy home for himself, and even had a guest bedroom for Zuko that had been waiting for him when he’d arrived, unannounced, at his uncle’s doorstep all those months ago. (Zuko didn’t like to think about why Iroh’d had the foresight to set up the room). His uncle was the only remaining family member that didn’t treat Zuko like a pariah, and he had to admit that it felt good to have someone fuss over him, and cook him meals, and give him sage advice, even when it was unsolicited.

But it had been over half a year living with his uncle, and Zuko was tired. Tired of not having access to his piano, tucked away in a storage unit halfway across the city, and tired of how much it hurt when the customers in his uncle’s shop flinched at Zuko’s scar. He hated the stares, the constant reminders that he bore physical evidence of his failure, of his father’s cruelty. He wanted nothing more than to shut himself away in his very own apartment with his piano and just _play_.

He told his uncle this much over breakfast.

“But so soon, nephew?” his Uncle Iroh implored, his eyes crinkling with concern as he looked up from the tea he was pouring. “You know you cannot overstay your welcome here. I have more than enough room for you.”

“I know, Uncle. And I appreciate it,” Zuko acquiesced, nodding gratefully as his uncle handed him his tea, “but I want my own place. I need to practice.”

Iroh nodded, but his eyes still betrayed the worry he clearly felt over Zuko’s decision. _Well_ , Zuko thought, _that‘s his problem_. He needed to get out, far away from his uncle’s concerned looks and any other reminders of the bleakness of his current existence.

“Where will you go?” his uncle asked, taking a seat across from Zuko at the little kitchen table, clutching his own cup of steaming tea. “You will not move too far, I hope? I would hate for you to return to Caldera City so soon after arriving in Ba Sing Se.”

Zuko’s cheeks flamed with anger at the mention of his birthplace. “I can never return to Caldera City, Uncle,” he bit out. “You know that.”

Iroh’s face remained impassive, his calm temperament ever impervious to Zuko’s outbursts. “Your father may have encouraged your departure from the city, nephew, but that does not mean you may never return. Even men as renowned as Ozai are unable to make such decisions. Caldera will always be your home.”

“Caldera,” Zuko responded stiffly, “is the place where my father gave me this scar and told me I was too hideous to ever be a successful pianist. I will never go back there. Excuse me.”

He stood abrubtly, leaving his half-drunk cup of tea on the table and striding towards the door of Iroh’s apartment.

“Nephew, where are you going?” Iroh called from his spot at the table, some of the worry Zuko’d seen in his eyes before leaching into his voice.

“I have an apartment showing.” Zuko growled, grabbing his coat. “I’m moving out, remember?”

He slammed the door behind him on the way out.

_

The first thing Zuko noticed about the landlord was that she was tiny.

Standing on the steps of his prospective new apartment building, the girl couldn’t have been more than 5 feet tall. From distance Zuko had initially thought she was a child, but as he got closer, he could see that she was holding a sheaf of papers – the telltale sign of a real estate agent, he’d learned from the other showings he’d attended that week. He raised his hand in awkward greeting, but the girl stared past him as though lost in thought.

Once he got nearer to the steps, the sound of his footsteps echoing off the pavement, the girl turned towards him. “Are you Zuko?” she called down the sidewalk, and he suddenly noticed the long white cane in her left hand. Her vacant stare suddenly made much more sense.

“I’m Zuko, yeah.” He acknowledged, stopping at the bottom of the steps. “You’re… Toph?”

The girl grinned. “Yep. Nice to meet you. First things first, yeah, I’m blind. No, you do not need to help me up the stairs. I’ve got it covered. Come on, let’s check this apartment out.”

And with that brusque introduction, the landlord turned on her heel and very purposefully marched up the steps like she’d done it a thousand times. Zuko followed quietly in her wake, slightly in awe of the fact that a blind girl who had to be his age or younger was in charge of a building as well-established as this one.

Once in the lobby, Toph quickly felt around for the elevator button and pressed the _up_ arrow. “So the apartment I’m showing you today is a one-bedroom, one-bathroom, right?”

Zuko nodded before realizing she couldn’t see him. “Oh. Uh, yes.”

Toph sighed. “And I can’t interest you in _any_ other kind of apartment here?”

“Sorry?”

The elevator doors opened and Toph sidled inside, beckoning impatiently at Zuko as he stood there like an idiot, still processing her strange question. He quickly joined her. “The apartment’s on the sixth floor,” Toph informed him, a strange kind of smirk on her face.

Zuko pressed the button. “Why do you ask if I’d be interested in a different apartment?” he questioned as the elevator started to move.

Toph rolled her head to the side, cracking her neck loudly. “Oh, you know. It’s just that the only one-bedroom we’ve got available is a bit haunted.”

Zuko let out a loud, sharp laugh that startled even him. Then stared as Toph’s expression remained impassive. “Oh. You’re serious.”

Toph nodded, as solemn as he’d seen her since he arrived. “Unfortunately. But you know what, let me just show you the place.”

As if on cue, the elevator arrived at the sixth floor with a _ding._ The doors slid open and Toph hustled through them and into the hallway, Zuko once again trailing behind her. She arrived at a doorway towards the end of the hallway and pressed a keycard against the door handle until there was a mechanized click. “Traditional keys aren’t really workable for me,” Toph explained with a sly smile, pushing down the handle to swing the door open. “Come on in.”

Zuko stepped inside the apartment. It was just like the pictures he’d seen online – spacious, open-concept, painted a soft shade of cream. A large circular window off of the small kitchen let in tons of natural sunlight. The apartment was hardly furnished, save for a singular painting hanging in the middle of the back wall. It was a painting of a rolling wave, framed in ornate gold.

Zuko frowned. “Is there a reason that painting is in here?”

“It’s one of a kind. Comes with the place,” Toph informed him with a disarming grin. “You’ve gotta leave it up, it’s even written into the lease. Previous tenants have said that when they took it down, bad things started happening. Screaming in the night. Things going missing. Stuff getting knocked over. The usual haunting stuff.” 

“The usual haunting stuff.” Zuko repeated, dry. “Got it.”

Zuko didn’t believe in Spirits, ghostly or not. He had, at one point in his childhood, been very afraid of the vengeful ghost of his grandfather, whom his sister Azula had told him was going to come in the night and kill Zuko in revenge for some unspecified wrongdoing. Now, however, he had both the age and the wisdom to know that little story had simply been a figment of Azula’s unwavering cruelty, and ghosts most certainly did not exist. He’d seen how a great deal of Ba Sing Se’s citizens feared and respected the Spirits and their world, but Zuko never put much stock in those stories. If Agni was real, wouldn’t he have saved him from his father’s wrath?

He looked around the apartment again. Sure, it was weird that he’d have to leave that painting up, and the landlord was a bit strange, but it was a beautiful apartment, and fit nicely into Zuko’s “disinherited-but-still-doing-alright” budget. It was close enough to The Jasmine Dragon that Iroh could walk to visit him, if he was so inclined, and it had enough space for Zuko’s precious piano. It most certainly wasn’t haunted.

“I’ll take it.”

_

It took much quicker than Zuko expected to get everything settled. He followed Toph down to her office, where a packet of papers awaited him. Zuko didn’t miss the strange look on the landlord’s face when she presented him with the lease. He wondered if it had to do with the ghosts.

But when he slid the signed papers back across her desk, Toph’s pale eyes sparkled. “Well, that settles it. Welcome to the building, Sparky.”

Zuko started, his hand reaching for his scar involuntarily. “Sparky?”

“Yeah, I don’t know.” Toph shrugged. “Your voice is all gravelly, like you’ve just been smoking or something. Not a bad thing,” she added, “but it’s distinctive. I’ve gotta give all my tenants nicknames that remind me of the way they sound or smell or walk because there’s no way I can remember everybody’s name. Hence: Sparky.”

Zuko nodded, a wave of relief that she didn’t somehow know about his accident washing over him. “Okay. Um, cool. I’m excited to move in.”

“So what do you do, anyway?” Toph asked, feeling around her desk drawer for something. “I don’t get to read the applications, clearly.”

“I’m a classical pianist,” Zuko replied, feeling the strangeness of the words even as they left his mouth. “Well, I guess I’m training to be one. I still have a lot of practicing to do.”

Toph burst out laughing, and Zuko’s cheeks flamed red. He expected disdain from his father and sister when it came to his musical abilities, but Toph’s laughter was unexpected and frankly uncalled for. “What?” he snapped.

“Sorry, Sparky,” Toph choked out as she struggled to control her breathing, “It’s not you. I just – I have a friend who –“ she doubled over again, unable to stop laughing. “She – oh god, she’s going to –”

“Forget it,” Zuko spat, storming out of her office in an embarrassed rush. “See you on the first.”

“Sorry!” Toph called out after him, still laughing. “Seriously!”

_

As promised, Zuko was set to move in on the first of the next month. It was nearing the Winter Solstice, and Iroh’s tea shop was busier than ever with patrons desperate to escape the cold. As a result, his uncle was unable to join during his move-in.

“I am so sorry, nephew,” he said, his somber tone conveying the truth behind his words. “Even though you know I am unhappy to have you leave me, I would close The Jasmine Dragon for the day if I could. But I simply cannot afford to lose a day of business this time of year.”

Zuko nodded, his stomach clenching slightly at the thought of moving his piano into his apartment on his own. “I understand, Uncle.”

Iroh’s eyes brightened. “How about you invite your friend to help you? The lovely young woman you train with?”

His uncle was, of course, referring to Suki. When Zuko arrived in Ba Sing Se, freshly scarred and filled with rage, he’d had no outlets for his anger. He’d let out all of his frustration by slamming doors, yelling at slow-walking pedestrians, and (he could admit it) generally acting like an asshole. It was only when Zuko’d accidentally shattered one of Iroh’s favorite teapots during a fit of rage that his uncle had put his foot down.

“You will go to Kyoshi Dojo,” his uncle said, voice sterner than Zuko had heard it since he’d arrived, “and you will learn to channel some of this aggression, my nephew.”

Zuko had arrived at the dojo with low expectations. He and his sister had trained in Shaolin Kung Fu briefly as a child, before he’d discovered his passion for music, and he remembered only that Azula had surpassed him in ability, as she did with everything else in his life. He was unenthused by the prospect of learning some new martial art form and being inevitably shown up or laughed at.

His experience, however, had been quite the opposite. He was surprised to learn that Kyoshi Dojo was run entirely by women, all of whom were trained in several different martial arts styles. The women were all more than skeptical upon his arrival – it wasn’t every day that scarred Fire Nation men showed up at their door asking to train with them, apparently – but after a brief and somewhat humiliating spar with the dojo’s owner, Suki, he’d been allowed to stay.

“I like you,” Suki, a lithe and deceptively short woman with a short auburn bob, had said with a grin. She’d offered him a hand as he lay, winded, on the mat. “You never give up without a fight. Let’s see what we can do with all that anger you’re dealing with, huh?”

Suki quickly became his only friend, besides his uncle, in Ba Sing Se. He met with her every Thursday evening, and she would train him in the art of jiujitsu. Eventually, once Zuko got good enough to be a semi-worthy opponent, the two would meet up and simply spar. Suki never asked him questions about his scar or his life in the Fire Nation or even what his last name was, but she was clearly interested in helping him. And even though Suki kicked his ass more often than not, the sparring truly did help Zuko find some semblance of peace outside of music. He was grateful for Suki.

So maybe his uncle had a point. Suki would be a huge help in moving – despite her slender frame, she had some serious strength – and Zuko made up his mind to call her.

She picked up on the first ring. “Zuko, is everything okay? Are you hurt?”

Zuko blinked. “What? No. I’m fine.”

He heard a loud exhale on the other end of the line. “You scared the shit out of me, asshole. You have never once called me in the 6 months I’ve known you. I thought maybe you were dying in a ditch somewhere!”

“Not dying,” Zuko confirmed, “But I am moving. I’m staying in the city!” he added quickly at Suki’s noise of concern. “But I finally got my own place. I move in tomorrow and, um. Sorry to ask this of you, but is any chance you’d be willing to help me move my stuff?”

He winced at Suki’s sudden yelp of delight, loud in his ear through the phone’s speaker. “You want to hang out? Outside of the dojo? Are you kidding? What time should I come over?”

Suki met Zuko at his storage unit bright and early the next morning, her sleeves already rolled up in anticipation for heavy lifting despite the winter chill. “Hey, asshole,” she said with a mischievous grin, “let’s get this shit done!”  
Zuko had very few belongings after his departure from Caldera City – he’d been unable to part with his precious piano, but that alone had taken so much time and energy to extricate from his father’s home that he’d barely taken anything else with him. He and Suki made quick work of loading his meager belongings and grand piano into the small moving truck he’d rented, and before he knew it, they were at his new apartment building, grabbing his apartment keys from Toph.

“Nice to see you again, Sparky!” Toph said with a smile that walked the impossible line between contrite and shit-eating, “Glad I didn’t scare you away after my little laughing fit – sorry about that, by the way, it was an inside joke.”

Zuko got the feeling that she wasn’t telling him something important, but he didn’t have the energy to be mad at his blind landlord. Still, he bolted out of her office as soon as he got the chance, unwilling to risk being laughed at again. He found Suki in the lobby, attempting to fit his piano into the service elevator.

“So what made you move to Ba Sing Se, anyway?” Suki asked after they’d succeeded, squeezing into the elevator with him just as the doors began to close. “I don’t think I’ve ever asked.”

Zuko avoided her eyes, uneasy with any topic of conversation that wasn’t centered around martial arts. “Yeah, there’s kind of a reason it’s never come up. I don’t mind that we don’t share our personal information, you know.”

Suki rolled her eyes. “Alright, dipshit. We’ve been sparring for half a year now, so I’d say we’re friends. I’m helping you _move_. I think I deserve to know one tiny little factoid about you other than ‘my name is Zuko and I’m moody and I live with my uncle above a tea shop.’”

“I am not moody.” Zuko huffed. Suki raised an eyebrow. “Okay, fine. I’ll tell you about myself, as long as you promise not to ask me about my move. Or my family. Or, you know.” He gestured to his scar. “That.”

Suki looked stricken. “Fuck, Zuko. I don’t mean to pry, I just, you know. We’re friends. I think you’re pretty cool. I want to get to know you.”

Something twisted in Zuko’s chest. He couldn’t recall a single time in his lifetime that someone had looked him in the eyes and said sincerely that they were his friend. He wasn’t sure why someone as smart and cool as Suki wanted to be his friend, but he wasn’t about to question it. “Thanks,” he choked out, turning away so Suki couldn’t see the tears pricking at his eyelids. “I think you’re pretty cool too.”

Suki beamed at him as the elevator doors opened. “I am, aren’t I?”

_

It wasn’t until later, once he and Suki had set up the entire apartment and they were sprawled out on the living room rug, that Zuko offered up some personal information. He was halfway through his third beer, and the factoid drifted into his consciousness almost out of nowhere.

“I’m auditioning for the Ba Sing Se Symphony Orchestra next month,” he blurted out. “There’s a fact about me for you.”

Suki, still nursing her second beer, gaped at him. “Zuko, that’s fucking _sick_.”

Zuko flushed, shrugging his shoulders and looking down towards the carpet. “I don’t know. I mean, I might not get it. I probably won’t.”

Suki shook her head violently. “No no no. None of that. I bet you’re fucking amazing, Zuko. Holy shit! Will you play for me?”

Zuko was tipsy enough that he didn’t immediately shoot her down. The part of him still scarred by memories of his father’s harsh criticism was screaming at him not to play for Suki – what if she hated it? What if she laughed at him? But Suki’s face seemed so earnest, grinning at him over the top of her beer bottle, that he felt almost guilty at the idea of saying no.

“Okay,” Zuko replied, scarcely believing himself. “Sure.”

Suki cackled with glee, clapping her hands together like an overexcited seal. “Yessss! Serenade me!”

Zuko made his way over to the grand piano in the corner of his living room area. He sat down, cracking his knuckles nervously. Chopin’s Etude op. 10 no. 4 came to Zuko’s mind immediately – it was difficult, fast-paced, and aggressive, and often played as the subconscious soundtrack in his mind when he and Suki were sparring. “I wouldn’t call this a serenade song,” Zuko told his friend, “but I think you’ll like this one.”

He began playing with his usual forcefulness, practically slamming the keys as his fingers flew through the motions of one of his most practiced etudes. Still, despite his muscle memory, Zuko was rusty – it had been half a year since he’d practiced piano at all. He found himself concentrating especially hard on the keys in front of him, which is perhaps why he didn’t notice something was amiss until he heard Suki scream.

Snapping out of his reverie, Zuko turned to stare at the wall where a wide-eyed Suki was pointing, one hand clapped over her mouth in horror.

The painting on the wall was moving.

A deep, terrifying groan echoed through his apartment.

_Holy shit,_ Zuko thought before he ran for his life. _This apartment_ is _fucking haunted._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK SORRY I KNOW THIS HAS BEEN SO MUCH EXPOSITION!!! but we can FINALLY get to the really interesting stuff next chapter, i promise :) also i know suki and zuko were not friends early on in the series but for the sake of the story i need zuko to have a pal who isn't iroh, and i love the suki/zuko interactions in the comics so we're just gonna capitalize on that. hopefully they just seem friendly and not at all flirty, i'm trying really hard to make them seem just like bros bc i think even angsty zuko deserves himself a bro. esp since shit's about to hit the fan lmao. anyway pls comment and let me know what you think!


	3. ferme ta guele

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oop, it's been a minute!! before we start just wanted to say a BIG thanks to everyone who's read/given kudos/commented so far! i appreciate you all so much, you've been my biggest motivation to keep this story going. enjoy :)

Zuko awoke with a jolt.

_Where am I?_

He sat up slowly, taking in the space around him as his groggy, semi-hungover brain struggled to catch up. The scent of breakfast cooking and the sound of cheerful humming alerted him to what should have been immediately obvious– Zuko was on Iroh’s couch, covered by a decorative afghan.

The memories of the night before came crashing back, full force – the painting on his apartment wall moving on its own. The eerie groans that shook Zuko down to his very core. Practically sprinting out of his apartment with Suki close behind. Ending up at Iroh’s apartment with nowhere else to go, since Suki lived with three other girls and Zuko didn’t want to intrude. Iroh’s concerned face when he’d opened the door, no doubt recalling the night Zuko had first showed up on his uncle’s doorstep so many months ago. Zuko, exhausted and terror-stricken, crashing on his uncle’s couch without saying a single word beyond “Need to sleep here tonight.”

Zuko groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. So not only did he now have to worry about his apartment being haunted, but he also had most certainly terrified his uncle. How the fuck was he going to explain this? “ _Hey Uncle, don’t worry about me, but I may have seen a ghost last night. Either that or I’m clinically insane.”_

He rolled over to grab his phone off of the carpet next to the couch to check the time – it was only 6am, which explained why his uncle wasn’t downstairs serving customers already. Zuko selected Suki from his embarrassingly short list of contacts and typed out a brief text.

**Zuko Sozin, 6:03am.**

Was that beer somehow laced with cactus juice or did we encounter a ghost last night?

To his surprise, Suki texted back almost immediately.

**Suki Takayama, 6:04am.**

If it was drugs, it definitely wasn’t cactus juice. I’m allergic. Learned that the hard way once.

Zuko sighed. Suki was still typing.

**Suki Takayama, 6:04am**

But I know what I saw, Zuko. That painting was fucking moving. All signs point to ghost. 

**Zuko Sozin, 6:05am**

So my apartment is haunted. Great.

**Suki Takayama, 6:05am**

That’s rough, buddy.

“Fuck me.” Zuko groaned, dropping his head back to hit the armrest of the couch.

“I take it you’re awake, then?”

Zuko turned to see Iroh standing in the living room doorway, eyes crinkled with worry.

“Good morning, Uncle,” he said, sitting up abruptly and avoiding his uncle’s eyes. “Thank you for letting me stay the night.”

Iroh sighed, crossing the room to take the armchair across from the couch. “Do you want to discuss what happened last night, Zuko? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Uncle rarely used Zuko’s first name – he almost always called Zuko “nephew,” perhaps to remind Zuko that he did have some family left in the world who still loved him. His first name was usually reserved for moments of real concern. Zuko winced internally – he must have worried his uncle even more than he thought. He had initially considered telling Iroh about the ghost, but the last thing he wanted was to give his Uncle more reason to worry about him.

“I’m not in trouble, Uncle,” he reassured him. “I just – I was worried about you living here all alone. I wanted to come in and check on you.”

His uncle’s eyebrows shot up even further. “Zuko, you don’t have to lie to me,” he said, voice soft.

Zuko stood up. “I’m not lying!” he huffed, lying through his teeth. “Can’t I just be concerned for my uncle? Why is that such an outrageous claim?”

Iroh rose too, reaching out to place a hand on Zuko’s shoulder. “Nephew, I do not doubt your love for me. But to arrive at my apartment at two in the morning out of concern for my wellbeing is strange, even for you.”

“I’m fine,” Zuko insisted, grabbing his cell phone from the couch. “Maybe I was just homesick. Please, don’t worry about me.”

Iroh laughed dryly. “Nephew, you’re making that near impossible.”

Zuko looked at his phone. His home screen was blank, but his uncle didn’t have to know that.  
“Oh, I got a text from Suki. She wants to meet for breakfast. I gotta go.”

Iroh sighed. “Zuko–”

But Zuko was already halfway out the door. “Thanks for letting me stay,” he called out, and before his uncle could say another word, he was closing the door behind him and jogging down the stairs to the street.

Once Zuko got to the sidewalk outside the Jasmine Dragon, he took a deep breath. _Where to now?_ There was really only one option.

Zuko turned in the direction of his apartment and started walking.

_

Katara awoke that morning to the sound of a piano playing.

_Jesus Christ, did he really not learn his lesson last night?_

When Toph had arrived at Katara’s apartment the week before, laughing so hard she could hardly breathe, Katara had been prepared to hear a funny story about a prospective tenant being scared off by the haunting rumors. After all, Toph had showed Chong and Lily’s old apartment to several different people, and every single one of them had made some sort of excuse to not sign the lease once Toph described the details of the “haunted painting.” What Katara was not expecting, however, was for Toph to tell her that the apartment had been sold.

“To– a– fucking– pianist–” Toph had gasped out between bursts of laughter. “Oh Sugar Queen, I am _so_ sorry –”

She’d kept laughing, and Katara had gotten the distinct impression that her friend was not, in fact, sorry.

“And you just sold it to him?” Katara had groaned angrily. “Like, without even _trying_ to scare him off?”

Toph had rolled her eyes, snapping out of her hysterics. “Oh, come on, Sugar Queen, I’m not stupid. Of course I tried to scare him off. But this fucker doesn’t believe in the Spirit World, I guess. And I very well couldn’t tell him he wasn’t allowed to rent the apartment; my parents had already approved his application!”

Sokka, of course, had been annoyingly chipper about the whole thing. “You get to test my contraption, Katara! This is great news!”

So test the contraption she did. The day her neighbor – Toph said his name was _Sparky_ , apparently, what a dumb name – was set to move in, Katara had fumed silently all day long as she listened to him and some girl (A friend? Girlfriend?) clunk around his apartment, setting things up, talking as loudly as they fucking pleased, and just generally being horribly annoying. Katara waited and waited for the girl to leave so she could spook the shit out of her neighbor when he was alone, but when he started playing the piano – at _1:30am_ , for fuck’s sake – Katara knew it was the last straw. She grabbed the metal handle on the wall, pressed play on her phone, and listened in deep satisfaction as the girl screamed, the music stopped abruptly, and the two fled the apartment in apparent hysterics. Katara’s apartment had been filled with blissful quiet yet again, and she had gone to bed smiling.

But now her neighbor was back. And he was playing piano at _seven in the morning._

Katara swung her legs over the side of the bed, practically vibrating with anger. She padded over to the hollow wall as quietly as possible, thought she doubted the asshole could hear her anyway, with all of the racket he was making. Sure, he was objectively talented, but it’s not like that mattered when he was interfering with Katara’s precious sleep.

_Time to pay, asshole._

Katara fished out her phone and quickly pulled up the “Ooky Spooky” audio file. After pressing play and grabbing the metal handle on the wall, she began to rotate the painting once more.

_

Zuko bolted up off the piano bench.

He’d been back in his apartment for less than 30 minutes, and just as it had the night before, the ocean painting on his wall was moving on its own. The spooky moans were back again, too, somehow even louder this time. Zuko knew he should be terrified.

But honestly, he was just annoyed. He’d barely gotten any sleep the night before thanks to this fucking ghost, and the thing that was triggering its activity was clearly his music.

“Am I really that bad at piano, asshole?” he called out towards the painting, too exasperated to be afraid of any kind of ghostly retribution.

The painting’s movement halted for a brief second, as if the Spirit hadn’t been expecting a response. _Very interesting,_ Zuko thought, striding over to the painting in what was probably an incredibly stupid stroke of inspiration. _Maybe I could get it to–_

He grabbed the painting by its sides and yanked.

“ _Ow!_ ”

Zuko froze.

A human voice had just echoed through the wall, clear as day. And it had not sounded one bit like the male groans that were currently emanating from the wall. It sounded like – well, it sounded like a _girl._

“Um, hello?” Zuko called, “Is someone there?”

Silence.

Zuko tried to pull on the painting again, and –

“Fuck! Ow, _stop_ that!”

Zuko gaped. “What the fuck?”

A very feminine, very flustered sigh came from the other side of the wall. “Yeah, hi. Um. Surprise, there’s not a ghost in your apartment. Now can you _please_ push the painting back into the wall, you’ve trapped my hand in between this handle here, and I think I may have broken a finger.”

Zuko wordlessly pushed the painting back into the wall, and the girl next door sighed with relief. The eerie moans cut off abruptly, like someone had pressed play on an audio track, and –

Suddenly, the reality of Zuko’s situation sunk in. He had been fucking _tricked_. His vision went red.

“Wait, hold the fuck on. You’re telling me that my apartment is _not_ actually haunted, and that you’re some – some fucking _girl_ living next door who gets off on scaring her neighbors? What the fuck is _wrong_ with you? I could fucking sue you, you know that, right?”

Instead crying and groveling – the response Zuko would expect from someone so clearly at fault in this situation – the girl huffed angrily.

“Okay, asshole, listen here. This wall is fucking hollow, and for some reason, you think that it’s cool to play piano at ungodly hours of the morning. I am trying desperately to get into med school, and I cannot study or sleep with you playing your stupid little songs whenever you feel like it.”

Zuko clawed a hand through his hair furiously. “My _stupid little songs_? I’m a classical fucking pianist, I’m sorry that practicing my actual craft is disturbing to you and your ‘studying’. Have you ever heard of going to a fucking _library_?”

“I need absolute silence to study!”

“Isn’t it holiday break? What could you possibly be studying for?”

“I have to study for the MCAT, asshole, I’m trying to get into med school! Do you ever listen?”

“Do _you_ understand how fucked up it is to haunt someone’s apartment?”

“Well, you hurt my finger!”

“I didn’t know the painting was being controlled by some psycho on the other side of the wall! I thought you were a fucking _ghost_!”

The girl fell silent. Zuko smiled grimly, satisfied that he’d shut her up. “Got you there, huh. Well, I won’t sue you. Not because you don’t deserve it, but because I need this apartment, and I don’t have the time or the money to take you to court. Just stay out of my way, and leave me the fuck alone.”

_

Katara knew, objectively, that she was in the wrong. She had tried to scare her neighbor out of an apartment that he’d already paid and signed a lease for. That was kind of an asshole move.

In her defense, however, her neighbor was _also_ an enormously petty asshole.

The day her (admittedly pretty foolish) plan was exposed, Sparky – or whatever his stupid name was – proceeded to play piano for the rest of the day.

It wasn’t that he was a bad musician, like Chong and Lily had been. His playing was clearly very skilled, even if it did seem a bit stiff. It’s just that it was so loud, and so fucking _incessant_. Besides getting up twice to go to the bathroom, her neighbor stayed at his stupid piano every other second of the day, banging out etude after etude, sonata after sonata – Katara would have been impressed if she wasn’t so incredibly peeved at what a vindictive asshole he was being. Because she was sure that this wasn’t his normal rehearsal schedule – nobody was _that_ dedicated to their craft. No, he was just doing it to piss her off.

Katara reviewed her options.

One, she could go to the University library to study. But that was out of the question because her ex-boyfriend Haru worked at the help desk, and she’d have to walk past his pouty face every time she wanted to use the bathroom. _You dump a guy after two weeks of dating and he looks at you like you’ve killed his cat owl for the rest of eternity. Ugh. Men._

Two, she could go to Sokka’s – but that would require telling him that his haunting plan had failed abysmally, and she wasn’t prepared for the inevitable sulking that would ensue after _that_ conversation.

Three, she could go to Aang’s. That wasn’t a bad idea, actually, except for the fact that he had no idea about the haunting plan and would absolutely be upset about 1. being left out and 2. the idea of trying to scare someone out of their apartment. Understandably so, but still.

Going to see Toph was unthinkable – Katara wouldn’t be able to bear the hysterical laughter.

So she was stuck in her apartment, trying desperately to study with a probably broken finger while her awful neighbor plunked away at his stupid piano just to annoy her.

Well, two could play at that game.

The next morning, Katara woke up voluntarily at 7am for the first time since high school. Her neighbor was already up, the bastard, and she could hear him clunking around his kitchen. Katara had been hoping to catch him asleep, but that was no matter. She could still annoy the crap out of him. Besides, her apartment _really_ looked like it needed a deep clean.

She started vacuuming. Loudly. For hours. Bumping into as many furniture pieces as she possibly could. If she happened to ram the vacuum into the shared wall a couple dozen times, well, that was just part of the deep cleaning process! She heard her neighbor groan in frustration after the two-hour mark had passed, and Katara grinned, triumphant.

“See, asshole?” She yelled through the wall, “This is what happens when you fuck with me!”

When Katara heard the door to his apartment slam, she considered herself victorious.

That was until one o’clock the next morning, when she was awakened by the loudest piano playing she had ever heard in her life. “Did you shove the piano up against the _wall_?” Katara yelled, furious. A sharp burst of laughter through the wall was the only confirmation from her neighbor that she needed. He kept playing.

Katara woke up at 5am and turned on the loudest, most violent death metal she could possibly find.

Her neighbor watched a Michael Bay marathon at full volume from 4 in the afternoon to 4 in the morning.

Katara put _vile_ porn on blast through her wall speakers while her neighbor was on the phone with his uncle.

Their feud went on for days. Katara had never been more sleep deprived in her life, but there was something admittedly exhilarating about finding a new way to torment her neighbor. Sure there were a few mishaps – putting nails in a blender was _not_ a good idea, it turned out, and she’s pretty sure she heard her neighbor get his fingers slammed by the piano lid during a particularly violent sonata – but it was almost _fun._

So Katara was almost disappointed one morning when she woke up to silence _._ Almost. Mostly though, she was just smug. She’d worn him down. Their little feud was over.

“Give up that easy, huh?” she taunted through the wall. “So, when do you move out? Should I throw you a going away party?”

That’s when the ticking started.

At first, Katara’s sleep deprived brain jumped to the conclusion that perhaps her psycho neighbor was a little _too_ psycho, and there was a bomb in the wall or something. But by the time her logical brain had caught up and told her that no, that was definitely not the case, Katara’s childhood memories were already flooding back – playing the dusty old piano at the reservation rec center, watching in awe as her mom picked out beautiful melodies in time to the ancient metronome. “Now you try, Katara,” her mom would say, laughing, and Katara would giggle and slap the keys with her chubby little hands.

Katara’s eyes filled with tears at the memory, but of course her neighbor didn’t know about all that. He was just an idiot who thought he could annoy her with a stupid metronome. “That’s the best you can do?” she spat, “You’ll have to try harder than that.”

The metronome kept ticking on.

_

Two days later, Katara was going to lose her damn mind.

The metronome. Was still. Ticking.

The steady rhythm had permeated her very soul. Every step, every breath she took was to the beat of the metronome. Katara could still hear the ticking in her head when she put on the noise-cancelling headphones. Even when she left her apartment to go for a walk in the snow to clear her head, the ticking sound was still rattling around inside her brain.

Worse than all that, Katara couldn’t stop thinking about her mother. About how much her mother had loved playing the piano, how good she’d been at it for someone who was never trained. How excited she would have been if she’d known Katara was neighbors with a real classical pianist. She would have wanted to meet him, Katara thought. She would have been disappointed in the way her grown daughter was acting. _You're supposed to be helping people, Katara, s_ he would say. _Not getting in petty feuds with your neighbors._

Katara hated to admit it. She really did. But her neighbor had won.

“Okay, fine,” she called out on the evening of the second day. “You win. Please, just turn it off.”

The metronome kept ticking.

Katara sighed, resting her forehead against the shared wall. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I tried to scare you. It was a fucked-up thing to do. It won’t happen again. Not to you, not to anyone.”

The ticking stopped.

Katara practically moaned with relief. “Thank you.”

Her neighbor spoke, surprising Katara with his calm, rasping voice. She’d only ever heard him yell. “Alright, now what?”

Katara took a deep breath. “We handle this like adults.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LMAO THEY INTERACTED!!! can u believe it's taken us 2 whole chapters to get a real convo between these two? even if it was mostly all passive aggressive bullshit, writing these two losers is so much fun. hopefully this chapter doesn't seem too far fetched - it's pretty much exactly how shit goes down in the movie, minus the stuff about katara's mom (cuz you knowww i had to throw in some katara angst to guilt trip our girl a little bit!) comments are always SO welcomed and appreciated! this story has no beta also so please bear with me :)


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